“is anybody going to die in this chapter?” asked a little girl who is very dear to me, as we were reading aloud last evening. the chapter had certainly a rather ominous title, and if any one was going to die she preferred to go to bed. now if we had happened to have been reading this story together, i am pretty sure i should have met the same question; for, what with joe ill in bed, and grandma ellis ill at ellismere, and both of them pretty old people, it does look, i admit, as though there might be something sad to write about it. but, happily, for that happy summer there was to be no sorrowful ending. grandma ellis was soon quite herself again, and joe improved so much that it seemed as though he would probably be able to move about his cabin again some day. and so everything would have been bright and hopeful enough save for this—the time had come for courage and the bennetts and mary duff and sylvia to go home, and all hearts as a result were as heavy as lead. the bennetts were eager to 106see their father and mother and the baby, but they did not want to go back to the great, crowded city. and courage—well, she wondered what she possibly could find to do at home that would so absorb her whole thought and time as this little homespun household, and keep her half as happy and contented. she feared that when she went back, the old loneliness would surely come surging down upon her, and that life without miss julia would seem again intolerable. she was thinking just such sad thoughts as these as she sat alone in the little living-room, stitching away at a dress of mary bennett’s that needed mending for the journey on the morrow. every one but herself and mary duff had gone up to arlington for a good-bye call upon joe. courage was not planning to go until late in the day, calculating that the afternoon mail would surely bring her some word from the asylum; and so, as she sat alone with her own sad thoughts, she was suddenly surprised by a little figure in the doorway and a larger figure looming above it.
“where’s everybody?” asked brevet. “may we come in?”
“yes, indeed, come in!” courage answered, cordially. “indeed, i am glad to see you, for i’m as blue as can be.” 107"so are we,” said brevet, sitting disconsolately down in a huge armchair that made him look more disconsolate than ever “uncle harry’s hardly spoken to me all the way.” harry made no denial and dropped into the nearest chair.
“and you’ll be bluer still, brevet, to find that no one’s at home,” courage added. “they have all gone up to arlington.”
“well, that doesn’t matter,” brevet replied, philosophically, “we shall see them all tomorrow when we come down to see you off; but what we all care the most about is your going, miss courage. grandnana a cries every time she thinks of it, and uncle harry says it will be just like a funeral all the time for him until he is able to go back to the office, and i’m just as miserable as i can be.”
“well, it’s very kind of you all,” sighed courage. “it seems to me there never were two such dear places as homespun and ellis-mere, and you cannot imagine how i hate to leave them.”
“what will you all do anyway when you get back to new york?” brevet asked, a little sullenly, as though he felt in his heart that really they were to blame for going.
“well, we are not going because we want to, brevet,” courage answered almost sharply, 108for she was herself just down-spirited enough to be a trifle touchy and childish. “there is no reason why mary duff and sylvia and i should stay since the bennetts will not be here to be cared for.”
“but what is the reason for your going home, miss courage?” asked brevet, determined to have the whole situation explained.
“well, mary duff is needed at the hospital, where she has charge, you know, of a whole ward full of little babies; and, as for sylvia and me, our home is there you know—we belong there—and i shall try very hard to find something to fill up all my time, for that is the only way for me to manage now that i no longer have miss julia.”
“but do people always belong to just one place?”
“no, not always,” courage was forced to admit.
“well, you and brevet seem to be having things all your own way,” said harry, really speaking for the first time since he had entered.
“yes; i was thinking it would be more polite if you should join in the conversation,” courage answered, colouring a little, for she had felt annoyed at harry’s apparently moody silence.
“well,” he added, slowly, “i do not know 109on the whole that there is anything for me to say.”
“then why did you come?”
“simply to see you once more.”
“and what was the use of that?” courage asked, she hardly knew why.
“no use, simply to enjoy the pathetic sort of pleasure of all last times; but i do not myself understand why you could not have stayed on and made us a visit? you would have made my grandmother very happy.”
“oh, harry, come off!” said brevet, who had unavoidably acquired a boy’s measure of slang, and who was old enough to appreciate when harry was not his frank, honest self. “that’s all stuff about grandnana—you want miss courage to stay for yourself just as much as grandnana wants her for herself and i want her for myself.”
“‘children and fools speak the truth,’” said harry, looking straight at courage.
“yes, that’s the blessed beauty of them,” looking straight back at him.
“other people don’t dare,” said harry.
“other people lack courage.”
“i quite agree with you. i know a fellow who feels that with courage he could defy the whole world.”
“brevet,” said courage, folding away the 110mended dress, “there is a pile of pictures yonder that i have been collecting from the magazines and papers for your scrap-book. bring them here and let us look them over.”
brevet was not to be diverted. it was always one thing at a time with him. the pictures could wait—he couldn’t. he had one or two questions yet to ask, and he came and stood beside courage as though to compel her undivided attention.
“but why couldn’t you visit us? didn’t you want to?”
“yes, i should have been glad to come, brevet; i cannot explain to you why i couldn’t.”
“i suppose it was because there wasn’t anything particular for you to do; you always want to be doing something. now, miss courage, i have heard grandnana say that if uncle harry would bring a wife home to ellismere some day she would give her all the housekeeping. now, don’t you think you could come that way, because then you would have a great deal to do?”
“can you not stop this child?” said courage, turning with a look of indignant appeal to harry.
“he is doing very well,” harry answered, without looking up. 111brevet, intent upon his own line of thought, paid not the least attention to either of the last remarks.
“now, miss courage,” resting one arm on her chair and speaking thoughtfully and slowly, “couldn’t you—don’t you think you could—perhaps—be uncle harry’s wife and so belong up to our house and have lots of things to do?”
“yes, couldn’t you—perhaps?” said harry, very earnestly.
courage gave one glance toward harry, and then sat gazing straight at brevet with a look on her face as though endeavouring to frame some sort of answer; while brevet, with appeal in his eyes more eloquent than words, waited in solemn silence for her answer.
“but, brevet,” she said, at last, “are you sure, perfectly sure that your uncle harry would not mind?”
“perfectly sure!” but not so much as looking toward harry, so completely did he regard the matter as resting wholly between courage and himself.
“well, then, brevet, i believe i could.”
then for the first time brevet showed an inclination to include harry in the conversation, but for that matter he had to, for harry was close beside courage now. “there,” he 112said, with a great sigh of relief, “what did i tell you? perhaps she doesn’t care enough to do it for you, but she cares enough to do it for us all three together.”
“run, brevet!” said courage. “see, there is mary coming with the mail. run, and bring it quickly.”
brevet scampered off in high feather, and courage instantly straightened herself up and looked accusingly at harry.
“do you mean to say that you actually talked all this over with brevet?”
“no,” he answered, never looking so handsome or so happy in his life. “he talked it all over with me. he seemed to think it the one way out of the difficulty.”
“and you knew he was—he was going to say all this to me?”
“no, i never so much as dreamt it for a minute, i assure you, or that he was going to take matters into his own hands. on the contrary, i wanted to come alone this afternoon, but come he would. he had evidently thought out his own course of action, and i shall bless him for it all my life.”
